Hello,Nick. Well, if you mean I have disrespect for the politicians who say one thing, and mean another, who get up the easy way and not through the people, but who claim to be of the people, who leave their church after 20 years, because it doesn’t match the image he wants to project, well then, that’s right.
If you think I a very impressed by a woman who had a special needs baby and knew he was going to be a special needs baby before he was born,and who refuses to have an abortion, etc, and so forth, well, yes, yes, and I think young women around the world should be as well.
Do I think your faith in Obama is ill placed, well a month or so ago, and from the beginning, I said none of these candidates are presidential. I was judging them and not you. Hey, I wanted to vote for the guy. He taught at the same school that I taught at, he came up in the same neighborhood I spent my first 12 years and another 10 later on.
He now lives about two blocks from where I lived. It’s a silly pride thing, and
I wanted to like him, he’s a mutt like me, but I know that snake oil con man thing he does all too well, cuz in Chicago, guys like him are a $1,000 dollars a dozen…lawyers and politicians galore… and wait til you get to know Emanuel.

Palin was a VP candidate, and not he President elect, I judge her for who she is, not who she said she was. It’s different.
I like Clinton, too, because he was smart and he wants to teach us all stuff he knows. That’s so cool, but the Clinton years were not kind to me and a lot of other people I know.
We had to be satisfied just getting by and paying the rent to the European elite that own a lot of rental buildings in Chicago at that time. Every time we’d get a raise or a break, they’d raise the rent. People had to work two and three part time jobs because there were no good jobs, no health insurance and no foreseeable way out.
And another thing, while I am at it, GW Bush had a full house of minority people in the White House with him and Obama, so far has one Jew, and the rest are white as snow.
I have said before that I don’t see race. I was born in a place where we all played together and no one told us not to.

I don’t mean to smash your faith. But faith gets tested and if you stay with it, you might learn something.

In the long run, I realize nothing I say amounts to a hill of beans, I just like showing a little of the other side that people don’t see. It’s like coyote teaching. Don’t take offense to anything I say. Questioning me is good though I don’t mind that. In fact, you reminded me of something I needed to remember, so many thanks. It’s all good medicine.!

David: Here are links to two cases, Bush v. Palm Beach County, 531 U.S. 70, December 4, 2000, and Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98, December 12, 2000. Are these the cases you were discussing? To say that the Supreme Court “gave Bush the victory” is stretching a metaphor a lot farther than it will go, but Gore’s supporters have been stretching it for so long and so loudly that at this point it may sound true, at least to those who want to believe it.

By the way, there were some statistical anomalies in the recount in Florida that may suggest attempted fraud on the part of Gore’s supporters, which bear a striking resemblance to the patterns emerging in the Franken/Coleman contest.

DavidL and JoeD: The 2000 race was, in fact, stolen. The recount was sponsored by a number of newspapers and/or media. The recount found that Gore would have won, but most TV and newspapers that carried that story in the fall of 2001 buried the lead. Instead, they put in the headline some detail about how in this-or-that country the vote would not have changed, but in fact, if you read the whole story, you found that Gore would have won.

So the facts are these:
1. The Supreme court stopped the recount.
2. Some of the contested votes, recounted, would have given Bush the election.
3. BUT — ALL the votes, including “overvotes” that could have been read more accurately, would have given the election to Gore. This was found by a joint media funded effort.
4. The media then buried the lead, supporting the myth that Bush won. He didn’t. He just got the presidency in an illegitimate way. If winning even by illegitimate means or stealing still counts (and in the real world, it does count for something), then Bush won. If legitimacy counts, then Gore won, and Bush’s first term was illegitimate, and he never would have won a second term, had Gore been the hero of 9-11.

A clip from an article on this:

Published on Thursday, November 15, 2001 in the Long Island, NY Newsday

Not That It Was Reported, but Gore Won
by Jim Naureckas

IN JOURNALISM, it’s called “burying the lead”: A story starts off with what everyone already knows, while the real news – the most surprising, significant or never-been-told-before information – gets pushed down where people are less likely to see it.
That’s what happened to the findings of the media study of the uncounted votes from last year’s Florida presidential vote. A consortium of news outlets – including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Tribune Co. (Newsday’s parent company), The Wall Street Journal, Associated Press and CNN – spent nearly a year and $900,000 reexamining every disputed ballot.

The consortium determined that if the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed the ongoing recount to go through, George W. Bush would still likely have ended up in the White House. That’s because the recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court – as well as the more limited recount asked for by Democratic candidate Al Gore – only involved so-called undervotes, ballots that when counted mechanically registered no choice for president.

Gore and the Florida Supreme Court ignored overvotes – votes where mechanical counting registered more than one vote – on the assumption that there would be no way to tell which of the multiple candidates the voter actually intended to pick.

But as the consortium found when it actually looked at the overvotes, one often could tell what the voter’s intent was. Many of the overvotes involved, for example, a voter punching the hole next to a candidate’s name, and then writing in the same candidate’s name.

Since the intent of the voter is clear, these are clearly valid votes under Florida law. And Gore picked up enough of such votes that it almost didn’t matter what standard you used when looking at undervotes – whether you counted every dimple or insisted on a fully punched chad, the consortium found that Gore ended up the winner of virtually any full reexamination of rejected ballots.

So there are two main findings: The Supreme Court’s intervention probably did not affect the outcome of the limited recounts then under way, and more people probably cast valid votes for Gore than for Bush.

If the first finding was the important news, the consortium was scooped long ago: The Miami Herald and USA Today, working as a separate team, published stories in April that argued persuasively that the particular recounts that were halted by the Supreme Court probably would have produced a Bush victory.

What’s new is the finding that, since voters are supposed to decide elections rather than lawyers or judges, the state’s electoral votes appear to have gone to the wrong candidate. Given that the outcome in Florida determined the national victor, this is not just news but a critical challenge to the legitimacy of the presidency.

So how did the media report the results of the ballot reexamination?Overwhelmingly, they chose to lead with the news that was comfortable, uncontroversial – and seven months old. “In Election Review, Bush Wins Without Supreme Court Help,” was The Wall Street Journal’s headline on its story, paralleling The New York Times’ “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.” That angle would be fine if you believed that the Supreme Court was the most important aspect of the story; but what about the presidency?

Other members of the consortium emphasized the most Bush-friendly aspects of the story: “Bush Still Had Votes to Win in a Recount, Study Finds,” was the Tribune Co.’s Los Angeles Times’ main headline on its report, matching The Washington Post’s “Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush” and CNN.com’s “Florida Recount Study: Bush Still Wins.” The St. Petersburg Times’ Web site put it succinctly: “Recount: Bush.” While some of these outlets tried to convey greater complexity in subheads, all these headlines obscure the fact that the outlets’ most comprehensive recount put Gore ahead of Bush.

[….]
………………………….
(There’s more to the story, but you get the picture.)

The truth is that it’s a myth to claim Bush legitimately won the 2000 election. But if you want to go on supporting the myth, you can make that choice. Making that choice may make you a deliberate liar, however. Bush is one of those, and Cheney too. Not that you wouldn’t have company.

I tried to read thru those cases a couple of times, but there is too much going on around here today. But, what IF GORE had won the election and taken his place in the White House? I really wonder how effective he would be. Given his rather lack luster vice presidency, and I am speaking here out of
complete ignorance, just to pose the question.

Bright, “if you mean I have disrespect for the politicians who say one thing, and mean another,…”, no I mean you have disrespect for your fellow voters who SAW all of these so-called discrepancies, just like you SAW all of the discrepancies with Palin, and voted ON PURPOSE the way they voted not because they were DUPED but because they believe different things from what you believe.

A noun, a verb, and an anecdote from Chicago does not equal greater authority than your fellow citizens.

That’s fine if you like and are impressed by Palin, but it does not make me wrong to find her pathetically wanting and an insulting candidate thrown out as a cynical attempt to appeal to voters. “If you think I a very impressed by a woman who had a special needs baby and knew he was going to be a special needs baby before he was born,and who refuses to have an abortion,” I love this wording, as if there are people around who were trying to make her have an abortion, or who would have been happier if she had, and she has somehow defeated them and stood up to them.

” and wait til you get to know Emanuel.” another comment which hints that you, with connections to Chicago, somehow understand this guy differently, and that people who are not against him somehow don’t get him. I get him. I watched him through the CLinton admin. And you know what, Obama HAS to have someone like him to play the tough cop, because he has to play nice cop….or else. Obama has a box about 1 foot by 1 foot to operate in, all through the campaign and perhaps even now. He did so effectively enough that many people who were initially not disposed to vote for him ended up doing so. But for some — Sean Hannity and yourself, for example, there is nothing this guy can do to earn himself one minute out of your damnation. Because you know better.

Hi, Nick. Well, I can see your points. And they are good ones. I can tell you that I don’t damn Obama. I damn the way he is portrayed and the way all of humanity’s expectations are falling upon him. I say no, he will not meet them, just as he said no, he will need a lot of help from us, that night at Grant Park.

And, yeah, I do have a family member who has worked with RE, so I was just saying, watch him.

As for Palin…she was playing the fool, and she overdid it, but she was thrust into the position and felt nervous because she wasn;t ready, didn’t have the chance to get ready, like everyone else does, and she was demonized and I say she is a great lady.

I Never put anyone down for their beliefs, because it’s their path and their beliefs get them the personal insights they need to walk their path. Same for Nancy Reagan, same for Hillary, same for you and same for me.

As for abortion, yeah I feel like there are alot of people out there who want other people to have abortions and I feel very unhappy about that. And anyone who walks their talk is AMAZING!

If you infer that I am saying people that don’t agree with me are somehow lesser, no I don’t say that, I say I see this and you see that, in totality we may come to see the whole truth.

Oh, and let me add that I accept Barack Obama as my new POTUS and will be glad to back him up on his good work, including helping this country go greener, becoming safer, and helping the helpless and introducing policies that help this country grow financially in a good and hopefully stable way.

Hi Bright, thanks for your helpful clarifications. The one thing I would add — though it’s definite thread creep — is that I do not at all think there are people who WANT other people do have abortions? Who on earth would such people be, and what would be their motivation? Even the most ardent abortion defenders are defending the right of a woman to make that choice (I understand you disagree with the choice, but that’s another matter), not ENCOURAGING them to make that choice, and not happy about it — the abortion divide is a big enough one for us all to work with without adding in imaginary positions, like people who are somehow eager for others to have abortions. There are no such people.